Chapter 8 – Evaluation

This chapter explains the basic concept of evaluation for visual analytics, highlighting the complexities for evaluating systems that involve the close coupling of the user and semi-automatic analytical processes through a highly interactive interface. The exploratory tasks associated with visual analytics are often open ended and hence it is difficult to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of a particular method, let alone make comparisons between methods. The state of the art section outlines empirical evaluation methodologies, shows some examples of evaluation and describes the development of contests in different sub-communities to evaluate visual analytics approaches on common datasets. The authors then argue that a solid evaluation infrastructure for visual analytics is required and put forward some recommendations on how to achieved this.